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a4d7ab3
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a man cannot fulfill his purpose if he is living for applause, approval, and affirmation in this world. It simply will not come--not enough, certainly, to answer the needs of his soul.
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Stephen Mansfield |
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cf9407d
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If a man lives for the glory of God, he stops looking for affirmation from other human beings after every good deed, a pat on the head every time he does his duty. Instead, he throws himself into his role unselfishly. He contents himself with knowing he is fulfilling his purpose in this world and pleasing the God who made him.
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Stephen Mansfield |
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030435f
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The Kurds know--and never for a moment forget--what most people in the world have never understood. The nation of Iraq is not a centuries-old country with natural boundaries and an organically blended population. Instead, Iraq is a structure of artificial boundaries and unnaturally combined tribes and religions conceived by Europeans just after World War
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Stephen Mansfield |
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a1474ae
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Here is where it leads us. And let me make this clear: there is nothing that happened in that wounding experience with that church that is worth what is happening to you now.
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Stephen Mansfield |
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a031ba6
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Beer, well respected and rightly consumed, can be a gift of God. It is one of his mysteries, which it was his delight to conceal and the glory of kings to search out. And men enjoy it to mark their days and celebrate their moments and stand with their brothers in the face of what life brings.
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Stephen Mansfield |
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35764e9
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Honorable men don't settle for lives of regret.
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Stephen Mansfield |
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4b23772
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Life has meaning only in the struggle, Victory or defeat is in the hand of God, So let us celebrate the struggle.
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Stephen Mansfield |
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60607c2
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G. K. Chesterton: "The most extraordinary thing in the world is an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children." And"
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Stephen Mansfield |
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4fd769e
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Ultimately, though, you only know who a man is and what he believes by what he does. Not by what he sits around talking about.
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Stephen Mansfield |
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2a54584
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David knew what it was to be a man. As he lay dying, he called his son Solomon to his bedside and gave him final instructions: "I am about to go the way of all the earth. So be strong and show yourself a man." These are the last recorded words of one of the greatest kings to ever live. Of all he might have said to his son with his final breath, he chose to instruct him to be a man. They are words we should never forget."
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Stephen Mansfield |
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89e342e
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Being a man is a privilege, not an entitlement. It is a surrender of our priority. It is a laying down of our lives, not physically but inwardly--our preferences, our pleasures, sometimes even our dreams. Our version of Witold Pilecki's medals comes in the lives we offer to God, lives we have bled and sweated and prayed and given ourselves for. This is what it means to be a man.
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Stephen Mansfield |
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65b4a50
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As you forgive, you are allowing God to clean up the mess and start making your life right again. The demonic taunts are coming to an end. Peace is returning. Perhaps relationships are even being restored, and your faith is rising.
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Stephen Mansfield |
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aafc027
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Depend upon it, behind all great achievement there lies great toil: nothing that is worth doing is done easily.
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Lieutenant General Stephen Mansfield |
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a90923f
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Your horrific time of trouble offered you truths about yourself, windows into your own soul, and maps to the terrain of your inner life. Wise people learn to gather this intelligence to help them conquer themselves and then to live in loftier ways.
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Stephen Mansfield |
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5f71c51
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Every human soul is different. We are all shaped by both experience and design, by callings and the way our gifts mold our inner lives. Every soul has a bent, a drift, a way it wants to go. And when hard times come and the inner person writhes in torment, the soul reaches for what it thinks is anesthesia, for something to medicate the pain.
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Stephen Mansfield |
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2ae489f
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This is a good moment to remember one of Mansfield's Manly Maxims: "Manly men tend their fields." It means that we take care of the lives and property entrusted to us. It means that we take responsibility for everything in the "field assigned to us." We cannot do this without knowledge. We cannot do it if we are ignorant of our times, blind to the trends shaping our lives, and oblivious to the basic knowledge that allows us to do what we ar..
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Stephen Mansfield |
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22c7aaf
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What are you reading, watching, memorizing, and applying that will make you an exceptional man?
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Stephen Mansfield |
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82abddf
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Do not suppose that abuses are eliminated by destroying the object which is abused," he once wrote. "Men can go wrong with wine and women. Shall we then prohibit and abolish women?"
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Stephen Mansfield |
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2b42a01
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IF-- If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don't deal in lies, Or being hated, don't give way to hating, And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise: If you can dream--and not make dreams your master; If you can think--and not make th..
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Stephen Mansfield |
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46b0534
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exertion. We live in an opulent blandness--overfed, overtended, overentertained, and overly preoccupied with ourselves. But men need aggressive physical lives. They need contest and conquest, strain and struggle. Otherwise, we lose ourselves to softness and effeminacy. It is not much of a surprise that a New Testament word that is translated effeminate from the original Greek actually means "soft through luxury." It is a warning."
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Stephen Mansfield |
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f9933d7
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It is as though there is a splinter working its way to the surface, only this splinter is in your soul. And just as the skin wants a foreign object gone and pushes it out, the soul wants to be healthy and will not leave you in peace until you stop drenching it with the poisons of your feelings about the past.
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spiritual-maturity
local-church
spiritual-growth
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Stephen Mansfield |
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0057e7f
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Honorable men refuse to wallow in the small and the bitter. Honorable men refuse to hate life because something once went wrong. Honorable men don't build monuments to their disappointments, nor do they let others brand them and curse them to their destruction. Honorable
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Stephen Mansfield |
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04d83d3
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A banker can be as called and as pleasing to God as Billy Graham may be when he preaches. A brewer can serve as valuable a role in the kingdom of God as a missionary, a priest, or a pope. This is the truth of Christianity and this, too, is a core truth of the Guinness story.
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Stephen Mansfield |
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8a5be1a
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My central belief, though, is that men are made to protect the territory assigned to them and to assure that everything within that territory fulfills its God-ordained purpose. This is what manhood is designed for. This is how a man fulfills his purpose. His decision to "own" his field moves both the best that is within him and the best that God has to offer into that partnership I call Great Manhood."
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Stephen Mansfield |
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21e1d99
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In 2003, scientists at the University of Wisconsin reported that a pint of Guinness a day is good for the human heart.
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Stephen Mansfield |
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6cb44ef
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You must not think of them [Hebrews 12 Cloud of Witnesses] as perfect saints who never suffered as we do. Instead you must see them as the flawed and the betrayed and the wounded who simply chose to live above the programming of their pain.
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christian-living
church-hurt
local-church
christians
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Stephen Mansfield |
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bc235c7
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The confirmation of history is that we are not called despite our wounding and betrayal; we are wounded and betrayed because we are called. And God yearns to make your pain redemptive in your life.
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christian-living
healing-quotes
church-hurt
healing
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Stephen Mansfield |
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0ce95ee
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When church becomes for us an anointed have, when the grace is flowing and all is well we become sentimental...we remake people into what we need them to be. We are not wise in our love, prudent in our commitments, knowing in our fellowship. And so the evil comes and we are first amazed and then destroyed and then knocked off our axis as if never to return.
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church-hurt
church-relations
spiritual-maturity
local-church
healing
sin
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Stephen Mansfield |
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7a8f2c1
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Physical strength is never what makes a man manly. Rather, it is moral strength that identifies the true man,
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Stephen Mansfield |
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3c79419
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There is no such thing as perfection in a church. Instead, what you should be looking for is a covenanted body, a leadership team that has the goods for coaching you in Christ, and a place where you can invest yourself - from cleaning toilets to teaching what you know to ministering in song.
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choosing-church
local-church
church
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Stephen Mansfield |
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d73bed7
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John Wesley drank wine, was something of an ale expert, and often made sure that his Methodist preachers were paid in one of the vital currencies of the day--rum. His brother, Charles Wesley, was known for the fine port, Madeira, and sherry he often served in his home;
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Stephen Mansfield |
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687c839
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When an Antarctic expedition in 1933 returned to the site of an earlier expedition in 1929, a member of the team reported that at the abandoned station "there were also four bottles of Guinness on a shelf, which, although frozen, were put to excellent use."
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Stephen Mansfield |
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1f10843
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It is testimony to the importance of beer in their story that the brewery was the first permanent building the Pilgrims constructed.
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Stephen Mansfield |
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740a847
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There are also the Roman Catholic churches that display plaques in honor of Arthur Guinness, a Protestant, for his outspoken defense of Roman Catholic rights.
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Stephen Mansfield |
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d891447
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I am about to go the way of all the earth. So be strong and show yourself a man.
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Stephen Mansfield |
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b34e5e0
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What kind of degenerate thinks it is manly to beat a woman--that he is somehow affirming his superior status in the world through violence against those he is intended to protect?
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Stephen Mansfield |
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cfe293f
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What kind of man breaks his vows, destroys lives, and violates the laws of God for false love and brief pleasures?
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Stephen Mansfield |
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c7f771c
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that the poisoning of souls through church hurts is killing us.
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Stephen Mansfield |
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a141204
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The theme of the next sentence is the heart of his message: "The Almighty has His own purposes." This is what Lincoln believed now, and why he thought the war had taken the course it had. Events were not ruled by North or South--even their prayers were not fully answered, he admitted--but the war had unfolded according to the purposes of God. This because men do not contend with myth or principle or an absent sovereign, as Lincoln once beli..
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Stephen Mansfield |
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7a546f0
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declare war on those parts of themselves that keep them from exceptional lives.
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Stephen Mansfield |
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f31e0ae
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By doing rather than merely studying, we create a culture. Newcomers and the young feed on that culture. They watch. They do. They, too, are changed. Our culture expands. You Americans create a system of thought. The most you ask is that people contemplate new ideas. You might ask them to give or to sometimes attend meetings, but no contagious culture is created. Nothing is offered to newcomers and the young but thoughts. So they think. The..
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Stephen Mansfield |
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cc7744b
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behind all great achievement there lies great toil: nothing that is worth doing is done easily."41"
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Stephen Mansfield |
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680eace
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Hard times are painful, but also redemptive--meaning that in the hand of God they accomplish good things in our lives.
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Stephen Mansfield |
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97165b3
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We had hoped. It is what we say on the other side, when our vision is shattered and we feel ourselves to be fools for trusting in something we couldn't even see.
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Stephen Mansfield |